It is known to transmit information and listings of program information by means of so-called electronic program guides (EPG), which are based on the transmission of a large database of program information. Conventionally, the EPG data produced by e.g. a server regarding programs and their scheduled times is structured into sections. The EPG data is transmitted to a receiving device such as e.g. a remote control device.
Embedded and/or restricted devices need to download large sets of (E)PG data from some server (via Internet, cable, GSM, or any other network). Since devices have limited computing and storage, it can be difficult to store all (E)PG data in a memory.
It is possible to separate the TV listing data in 1) programs and 2) schedules for that program. This separation makes it possible that a program that is rerun several times has only one program record with multiple schedule records.
For example, the show with the title ‘Business news’ and description ‘an update on today's business worldwide’, will be rerun at 9 PM, 10 PM, and 11 PM. In that case, there will be one record that contains the program information (program ID, title, description, comments, . . . ), i.e.:
(‘P3992’, ‘Business news’, ‘an update on today's business worldwide’, . . . )
Three schedule records will refer to this program. The first schedule will contain the
(schedule ID, reference to program ID, start time, end time, indication of time shift, . . . ), i.e.:
(‘S005’, ‘P3992’, ‘9 PM’, ‘9:30 PM’, ‘live’, . . . ),
(‘S006’, ‘P3992’, ‘10 PM’, ‘10:30 PM’, ‘rerun’, . . . )
(‘S007’, ‘P3992’, ‘11 PM’, ‘11:30 PM’, ‘rerun’, . . . )
This known approach saves a lot of space as compared to joining both the program and schedule data into one record. Without joining, also the program info (title, description, . . . ) would be repeated three times.
Examples of such a data coding scheme are e.g. known from U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,263,501 and 5,652,613.
Although this scheme is efficient, problems may arise when a large set of EPG data is transmitted (downloaded) on a device having a relatively small memory or when the transmission is interrupted. In such cases, the present coding schemes for EPG data to be transmitted lead to a loss of useful information of stored data.